For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  In broad terms, fighting occurred in four theaters. The northeast encompassed the Canadian border from the Niagara River and Lake Ontario to the Richelieu River and Lake Champlain, while the northwest stretched from Lake Erie to the northern reaches of Lake Huron. A southern theater included the Gulf coast from New Orleans to Pensacola and jutted inland along the Alabama River and its tributaries. The fourth theater was the eastern seaboard and the Atlantic Ocean.

  Neither England nor America had thought about the strategy they would employ, but the initiative belonged to the United States. England could devote few resources to the New World and assumed the defensive in Canada, where 7,000 regulars garrisoned the border. The commander in chief for Canada, Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost, could also call on the militia, but this was scant comfort. He described it as “a mere posse, ill arm’d and without discipline,” and he worried about its loyalty because of the numerous former French citizens and American immigrants in the population. Aid might come from the Indians—if American control in the Northwest could be neutralized.

  Correctly assuming that Canada was vulnerable, the administration prepared to attack it. The obvious strategy was to capture Montreal. Madison preferred a powerful thrust along the traditional invasion route, but New England’s lethargy made such a movement difficult. On the other hand, war fervor in the west beckoned for offensives in the Great Lakes region. From these considerations emerged a three-pronged offensive, one prong moving from Detroit, another attacking along the Niagara River, and a third marching toward Montreal. Attacks on three fronts should have stretched British resources to the snapping point, but failure to coordinate the advances allowed the English to meet each one in turn.

  Begun with confident expectations, the campaign yielded dismal results. General William Hull entered Canada from Detroit in mid-July intent on capturing Fort Malden, but he encountered logistical difficulties. The enemy controlled Lakes Erie and Ontario, preventing easy supply by water, and Indian ambushes cut his overland supply line. Then came word that the British had captured Fort Michilimackinac. Fearing that thousands of Indians would descend on him from the north, Hull timidly pulled back to Detroit, where he surrendered in mid-August to a British force of regulars, militia, and Tecumseh’s Indians. The previous day the Fort Dearborn garrison evacuated its post on Hull’s orders, only to be slaughtered by Indians. Hull’s successor, William Henry Harrison, tried to redeem the situation with a winter campaign to recapture Detroit, but the British surprised an advance detachment at Frenchtown and annihilated it. The debacle in the northwestern theater was complete.

  On the Niagara front General Stephen Van Rensselaer, a political appointee with no military experience, commanded an army of regulars and militia. In mid-October he attacked Queenston, achieving initial success. But when militia reinforcements refused to cross the Niagara River into a foreign country, the British counterattacked and won the Battle of Queenston Heights. Van Rensselaer was replaced by General Alexander Smyth, who excelled at issuing bombastic proclamations to “plant the American standard in Canada.” Unfortunately his words spoke louder than his actions, and the American standard remained in America. Despite the Detroit and Niagara failures, if General Henry Dearborn’s offensive could capture Montreal the United States would still gain a decisive advantage. He moved slowly northward to the Canadian border where, as on the Niagara front, the militiamen would go no further. So Dearborn returned to winter quarters and all Canada was safe—at least until spring.

  While the effort on land was a demoralizing tale of poor strategy and weak leadership, the opening sea campaign was as refreshing as a cool ocean breeze. Americans had several advantages. The Federalist heavy frigates were the finest ships of their class in the world. Unlike the Army commanders, who had earned their reputations in the Revolution, ranking naval officers were generally young and had developed professional skills and attitudes during the Quasi- and Tripolitan Wars. Moreover, the British navy could commit only a fraction of its strength to American waters.

  The administration contemplated deploying the Navy in a single fleet, but this proved impractical. However, a squadron commanded by John Rodgers did get to sea, while other ships cruised alone to prey on British commerce or fight enemy warships. The result was a series of spectacular single-ship victories, with Constitution destroying the frigate Guerriere and then later defeating the frigate Java, and United States capturing the frigate Macedonian. In all these actions the American ship was larger and more heavily gunned, but knowledge of this did not detract from the celebrations following the news of each victory.

  These encounters persuaded Congress to authorize new ships: four 74s and six 44-gun frigates in January 1813, and six sloops in March. But the Navy’s glory days were over. Stung by the defeats, the British Admiralty ordered its frigates to avoid single-ship engagements and sent more ships to blockade the coast, trapping the American frigates in port. The few American warships that got to sea after 1812 could not repeat earlier successes because the British no longer underestimated them. When, for example, the frigate Shannon disobeyed orders and fought USS Chesapeake, the British vessel prevailed. However, the Chesapeake’s captain, James Lawrence, exemplified the Navy’s fighting tradition. When he was mortally wounded he told his subordinates, “Don’t give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks.” Although the ship did not sink, the English captured it only after boarding it and engaging in savage hand-to-hand combat.

  Meanwhile, the blockade became a noose, choking American commerce. By 1814 merchant trade was about 17 percent of what it had been in 1811. Beginning in 1813 the Royal Navy also made punitive coastal raids, and Jefferson’s gunboats, designed to prevent such excursions, proved ineffectual. Although the blockade penned up the frigates and crushed seaborne and coastal trade, it could not prevent privateers and small warships from slipping out of port. What success Americans enjoyed on the ocean after 1812 came from privateers and the sloops authorized in 1813. Five hundred privateers received commissions and took 1,300 prizes, and the sloops captured numerous merchantmen and a few small warships. But neither the 1812 frigate victories nor the depredations by privateers and sloops significantly altered the war’s course.

  Despite the setbacks on land in 1812 the United States remained on the offensive in 1813. Since the failures had been more the consequence of American ineptitude than British skill, optimism still prevailed. But the United States again dissipated its strength in several disjointed assaults on Canada. The Americans had limited success on the Detroit front when Oliver H. Perry’s ships destroyed a British squadron on Lake Erie on September 10. Perry scribbled a hasty report to Harrison on the back of an old letter: “Dear Gen’l:—We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem. O. H. Perry.” His communique was a model—perhaps unique—battle report, being both accurate and brief!

  The Battle of Lake Erie forced both British General Henry Proctor and Harrison into action. With his supply line across the lake cut, Proctor retreated eastward along the Thames River and Harrison pursued. Proctor confronted his pursuers two miles west of Moraviantown with about 1,000 regulars and Native-American allies. Harrison had thrice that many men, including 1,000 mounted riflemen from Kentucky, whom Colonel Richard M. Johnson had trained more rigorously than was usual for citizen-soldiers. In the Battle of the Thames the Americans won a smashing victory, killing Tecumseh and capturing most of Proctor’s army. With Tecumseh’s death the Indian confederacy collapsed, fulfilling a vital northwestern war objective. But, although satisfying a regional war aim, the campaign did little to advance the national war effort, since Harrison’s front was subsidiary to the more important front further east.

  Secretary of War John Armstrong, who believed that the Lake Champlain force was too weak to attack Montreal directly, instead proposed thrusts against Kingston, York, and Forts George and Erie. Triple success would make all British positions west of Kingston
untenable. The campaign began well. In late April General Zebulon Pike—of Pikes Peak fame—raided York against minimal resistance. A month later General Henry Dearborn attacked Fort George and the British commander, General John Vincent, retreated, taking the Chippewa and Fort Erie garrisons with him. So far so good, but the tide of war soon flowed against the Americans when Vincent routed a pursuing force at Stoney Creek and compelled the Americans to abandon Chippewa and Fort Erie. The American commander at Fort George tried to strike one of Vincent’s advanced posts, but the enemy captured the entire column at the Battle of the Beaver Dams, a defeat that left the Americans precariously isolated in Fort George.

  At this point Secretary Armstrong replaced Dearborn with General James Wilkinson, who had become the Army’s ranking officer when Wayne died in 1796. Wilkinson proposed that Kingston be bypassed and that he and General Wade Hampton, commanding at Plattsburgh, attack Montreal, with each army approaching the city from a different direction. Command disputes foiled the plan. Unfortunately, despite Wilkinson’s call for a coordinated dual advance, he and Hampton so detested one another that bickering rather than cooperation was the hallmark of the campaign. Armstrong came to the front to placate his feuding generals, but his presence only muddled an already tangled problem when he tried to exercise direct field command. British forces turned back Hampton at the Battle of Chateauguay and Wilkinson at the Battle of Chrysler’s Farm. In mid-December the Americans evacuated Fort George, unleashing a British offensive that captured or burned Fort Niagara, Lewiston, Black Rock, and Buffalo. These enemy successes canceled out the earlier American victories, leaving the Niagara front in British hands.

  After two campaigning seasons the United States was no closer to victory than it had been when the war began. It had frittered away precious opportunities to invade Canada while England fought for survival against Napoleon. Now news from Europe indicated that it would be an entirely new war in 1814, with the United States on the defensive. France collapsed in the winter of 1813–1814, Napoleon abdicated in April, and a victorious England could send reinforcements to America, transforming its war there from a desperate defensive to a punishing offensive. The British planned offensives from Canada, in Chesapeake Bay, and at New Orleans, and they were as confident as the Americans had been two years earlier. Yet the same obstacles that England had encountered in fighting the Revolution remained, especially America’s sponge-like nature. As the Duke of Wellington said, he could perceive no operation that would so badly injure America that it would be forced to sue for peace. Furthermore, by 1814 aggressive younger men had replaced the Army’s original commanders. Coming to the fore were Jacob Brown, Edmund R Gaines, Alexander Macomb, Winfield Scott, and Andrew Jackson. These men would direct the nation’s military fortunes for decades to come.

  Before British reinforcements could cross the Atlantic the United States launched two offensives. Wilkinson moved northward from Lake Champlain to La Colle Creek, where a stone mill occupied by fewer than 200 British soldiers blocked the advance. An artillery bombardment consumed all the American ammunition without damaging the mill, and Wilkinson retreated. On the Niagara front, Jacob Brown commanded an army of two regular brigades and one militia brigade. After capturing Fort Erie he moved northward, while General Phineas Riall, the enemy commander at Fort George, marched south. The armies collided at Chippewa, where they engaged in a classic eighteenth-century battle featuring close-range volleys and bayonet charges. The British broke the militia but then ran into a regular brigade under Winfield Scott, which fought back fiercely. At one point, as Scott’s brigade deployed into a battle line, Riall exclaimed, “Those are regulars, by God!” Technically he was correct, but Scott’s “regulars” were mostly recent recruits whom he had converted into disciplined troops in just a few months. An avid student of the history and theory of war, Scott had established a training camp where he drilled recruits intensely, proving that under competent officers citizen-soldiers could become quality troops without years of rigorous instruction.

  After Chippewa, General Gordon Drummond assumed command of the British force shortly before the armies clashed at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, which was more fierce than Chippewa, with opposing lines firing volleys almost muzzle to muzzle. The battle was a tactical standoff, but with both Brown and Scott wounded the Americans withdrew to Fort Erie, which they soon blew up just before returning to American soil. As usual, the Montreal and Niagara fronts were indecisive.

  As the rival armies battered each other along the Niagara, the British offensives began elsewhere. General Prevost advanced down the Richelieu, arriving at Plattsburgh in early September with 10,000 men and a flotilla under George Downie to guard his left flank and maintain his supply line along the lake. Opposing him were Alexander Macomb with 3,400 men and Thomas Macdonough’s squadron anchored in Plattsburgh Bay. Prevost decided to attack simultaneously on land and water. On September 11 Downie’s ships sailed into the bay, and a furious naval battle resulted. When the lake breezes wafted away the acrid smoke, the British flotilla was in ruins. Meanwhile Prevost’s land assault had developed slowly, and when he realized Downie was beaten he ordered a halt. His magnificent army was still intact, but he believed that loss of control on the lake made his logistical situation hopeless. The next day he retreated.

  The British Chesapeake Bay offensive began in August with Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane commanding the naval element and General Robert Ross the land forces. The ministry had authorized them to undertake punitive raids against seaboard cities to divert American attention from Prevost’s offensive. As Cochrane sailed up the bay Joshua Barney’s gunboat flotilla fled up the Patuxent River. The British anchored at Benedict, disembarked 4,500 men to march along the river banks, and sent some small craft upstream. Trapped, Barney destroyed his gunboats.

  Ross now marched toward Washington, which Armstrong had never fortified, considering it strategically insignificant. The administration hastily organized a predominantly militia force under General William H. Winder, but he neglected even obvious delaying tactics such as destroying bridges and sniping at the redcoats as they traversed dense forests. Winder established a three-line defensive position at Bladensburg, but the first two lines quickly collapsed, the soldiers departing at sprint speed. Barney’s 500 sailors, footsore from the unaccustomed marching, stood in the third line. Here hard fighting occurred, as Barney’s men fended off attacks and, crying “Board ’em, board ’em!” counterattacked. When the British outflanked their position the seamen finally retreated, ending the Battle of Bladensburg and opening the way to the capital. There the British burned the public buildings, including the White House and the Capitol.

  The next target, Baltimore, disappointed British hopes of another easy victory. The American commander, Samuel Smith, was a determined fighter, and militiamen rallied to his standard. In a testimonial to aching muscles and blistered hands, the city’s citizens fortified defensive positions. Guarding the harbor was Fort McHenry, one of the fortifications authorized in 1794. As Ross’s army marched from North Point, militia blocked the route about halfway to Baltimore. Although the British punched through the force, a sniper killed Ross. His replacement, Colonel Arthur Brooke, pushed on but halted before the city’s entrenchments. At dawn on September 13, Cochrane began a twenty-four-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry. A Washington lawyer, Francis Scott Key, watched the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air, saw the flag flying proudly over the fort in the dawn’s early light, and was mightily inspired. He jotted down some verses, later revised, that became “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But what was inspirational to Key was disheartening to Cochrane and Brooke, who withdrew on September 14. The second of Britain’s three offensives had now been blunted.

  The United States not only repulsed but shattered the New Orleans offensive, primarily because of Andrew Jackson’s cyclonic energy and iron-willed determination. Jackson became a hero after he won the Creek War of 1813–1814, a conflict in which he was virtually
an independent warlord, often acting on his own authority and sometimes contrary to the secretary of war’s orders. In 1813 a large portion of the Creek nation, seizing the opportunity presented by the Americans’ war with England, went on the warpath and killed more than 200 whites at Fort Mims, Alabama. With concentrated loathing the entire southwest struck back. When word of Fort Mims reached Tennessee, Jackson, a state militia general even though he had never led troops in battle, was recuperating from a wound suffered in a frontier brawl. With a bullet lodged close to his heart and his arm in a sling, he struggled from bed, summoned volunteers, and won the Battles of Tallushatchee and Talladega. Other columns from east Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi Territory also defeated the Creeks in isolated engagements. Lacking centralized direction, the campaign failed to end the Creek War, but the Creeks had lost at least 20 percent of their warriors.

  As the year ended Jackson’s army disintegrated when the volunteers’ enlistments expired and the men returned home. But reinforcements arrived in early 1814, and Jackson invaded Creek territory a second time. With incredible tenacity considering their reduced manpower, the Indians attacked three times, forcing Jackson to retreat. However, when he learned that more than 1,000 Creeks had fortified a bend in the Tallapoosa River, the Tennessean invaded a third time. At the peninsula’s neck the Creeks had a log breastwork, and at the far end they had canoes to flee in if hard pressed. Jackson sent his Cherokee allies and mounted volunteers to seal the escape hatch and stormed the barricade, pushing the Indians back in savage combat. Even Jackson admitted “the carnage was dreadfull” as the Creek nation’s fighting strength expired in a hundred acres of gullied terrain. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend ended the Creek War.